DOC: Pfizer decision won't affect Alabama executions

The Alabama Department of Corrections says a pharmaceutical giant’s decision to restrict the use of its drugs in capital punishment won’t affect the state’s ability to carry out executions.

In the past two years, five inmates on Ala­bama’s death row have died without ever seeing the inside of the state’s execution chamber, above, at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.(Photo: AP)

Pfizer announced Friday afternoon it would only sell seven of its drugs — including the three used in Alabama’s execution process — to wholesalers and distributors and purchasers who “will not resell these products to correctional institutions for use in executions.”

The company also said it would need certifications to ensure sales go where the company intends them.

“Pfizer makes its products solely to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve,” the company said in its Friday statement. “We strongly object to the use of any of our products in the lethal injection process for capital punishment.”

Bob Horton, a spokesman for DOC, said in response to emailed questions Monday that the state had an adequate supply of drugs to continue with executions.

“The company’s decision does not affect ADOC’s ability to carry out future executions by lethal injection if ordered to do so by the Alabama Supreme Court,” the email said.

Under Alabama’s execution protocol, a condemned inmate is first injected with 500 milligrams of midazolam hydrochloride, an anesthetic intended to render the individual unconscious. The inmate is then injected with 600 milligrams of rocuronium bromide, to paralyze the muscles, and then 240 “milliequivalents” of potassium chloride, to stop the heart.

The three drugs are on Pfizer’s banned list, as are hydromorphone and propofol, both anesthetics, and pancuronium bromide and vecuronium bromide, both paralytics. The Alabama Department of Corrections will not say where it obtains drugs used in executions, and has rejected Freedom of Information requests on the subject from the Advertiser and other media organizations.

The state used lethal injection in the January execution of Christopher Brooks, sentenced to die for the 1992 rape, robbery and murder of Jo Deann Campbell. Brooks didn’t exhibit any obvious signs of distress. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday blocked the execution of Vernon Madison, sentenced to die for the 1985 murder of Mobile police officer Julius Schulte, over questions about his competency. There are 185 inmates on the state’s death row.

A Pfizer spokeswoman declined to answer additional questions about its decision Tuesday, referring to its original statement.

Pharmaceutical companies, due to external pressure or internal deliberations, have become reluctant to allow the use of their products in executions. In 2011, Hospira announced it would stop manufacturing sodium thiapentol, widely used as a sedative in executions. The move sent states, including Alabama, scrambling for a replacement. Alabama replaced the drug with pentobarbital but said in early 2014 it had run out of its supply of the drug. Following Florida’s lead, Alabama switched to midazolam later that year.

Pfizer completed an acquisition of Hospira last September. Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death penalty group, said Pfizer “inherited” Hospira’s existing policies on the use of its drugs.

“Pfizer’s move here strengthening the pre-existing Hospira limitations will tighten up the supply even further, and close the holes through which they would have been able to acquire the drugs,” he said. “The resellers aren’t going to want to risk the entirety of their business with Pfizer to sell drugs for use in executions.”

The move could make it more difficult for states to replenish their supplies of the drugs, which have shelf lives. According to the Electronic Medicine Compendium, a United Kingdom-based website with pharmaceutical information, midazolam and rocuronium bromide can last up to three years. Potassium chloride can last up to five years.

Alabama law requires executions to continue even if courts rule lethal injection or electrocution — the state’s execution method from 1927 to 2002 — unconstitutional. Constitutionality, for now, is not an issue: The U.S. Supreme Court upheld lethal injection in 2008 and 2015. But the law is silent on what could happen if the state was unable to carry out lethal injections. While other states have passed laws allowing the use of other execution methods should lethal injection prove impractical, attempts to do so in Alabama haven’t gotten out of the Legislature.

Any new execution procedure would likely face challenges over the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Besides lethal injection, only one other method — the firing squad — has been upheld by the nation’s high court under the Eighth Amendment.

The constitutionality of the electric chair was upheld in an 1890 decision that predated the Supreme Court’s application of the Eighth Amendment to the states. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Florida’s use of the electric chair in 1999, but the state switched to lethal injection, mooting the case.